Ashleigh Pechaluk, right, was found not guilty of all charges stemming
from the Oct. 27, 2006, bludgeoning death of Dennis Hoy, 36, while he
slept in the bed of his long-time girlfriend Nicola 'Nicky' Puddicombe,
left.

Not guilty in axe-murder trial

A woman was acquitted today of murdering her lover's boyfriend in a bizarre love triangle.

A jury found Ashleigh Pechaluk, 24, not guilty of all charges
stemming from the Oct. 27, 2006, bludgeoning death of Dennis Hoy, 36,
while he slept in the bed of his long-time girlfriend Nicola 'Nicky'
Puddicombe.

Pechaluk, who has been in custody since that day, almost 3 1/2 years
in jail, was freed at 4 p.m. after the jury rendered its verdict.

She hugged her lawyers Peter Zaduk and Kristine Connidis and then
embraced her mother Bev Salton for several moments as both women shook
with emotion.

In summing up the prosecution case earlier yesterday, Madam Justice
Mary Lou Benotto called Puddicombe "a master manipulator who carried on
sexual relationships with Dennis Hoy and Ashleigh Pechaluk at the same
time."

The jury, which began its deliberations at 3 p.m. Monday, returned
its verdict after four days of deliberations. Crown attorneys Tom
Lissaman and Maureen Bellmore argued that Pechaluk is the axe-wielding
assassin who killed Hoy in a plot executed by her and Puddicombe, so
that the lesbian lovers would be free of his meddling.

Pechaluk, 24, maintained her innocence, saying she never intended to
kill Hoy. Once she rejected the scheme at the last hour, she testified
that Puddicombe alone murdered him. Her co-workers universally liked the
easy-going Pechaluk, who once aspired to become a police officer.

Benotto had said the jury members must first understand the dynamics
of the love triangle of Puddicombe, Hoy and Pechaluk, her lover of 13
months, before they could decide if the prosecution had proved its case
against Pechaluk.

"Puddicombe had Ashleigh Pechaluk believing she (Puddicombe) was
being forced to have sex with Dennis Hoy," said Benotto in her charge
yesterday.

"She wanted to pump up Ashleigh into a frenzy of hate, so that she
could kill Dennis Hoy," said Benotto. Hoy was found bludgeoned to death
by an axe as he slept in Puddicombe's bed.

Puddicombe convinced Pechaluk that Hoy, a GO Transit officer and her
boyfriend for 11 years, was a high-ranking member of the Hells Angels
motorcyle gang, a killer and a drug dealer, said Benotto. Pechaluk also
believed that Hoy "controlled Puddicombe," although there's "no evidence
of that (or Hoy's criminal activities)," said Benotto.

The lesbian couple also indicated the timing was perfect since Hoy
had recently had his car tires slashed and was sleeping at their home.
The women wanted the police to search for an assassin who'd invaded
their home to kill Hoy.

Pechaluk divulged details of the murder scheme to co-worker and
confidante Sarah Sousa, who became a key Crown witness. Sousa knew
inside details of the plan, including what Puddicombe would tell the 911
operator and police and where the assassin would have found a murder
weapon inside their Queensway Ave. home.

Puddicombe, now 36, will go on trial, starting on Monday at Superior
Court in front of Benotto. The trial is expected to last six weeks.

Boyfriend in female lovers' way, trial told

But Dennis Hoy, Puddicombe's boyfriend of 11 years, stood in the way, a murder trial was told yesterday.

So the two women
concocted a plan to kill the 36-year-old man with an axe as he slept in
Puddicombe's bed, prosecutor Tom Lissaman told a jury.

It was a scheme
Pechaluk, then 22, described in detail to a friend, right down to the
911 call her lover would make to fool police, Lissaman alleged at the
opening of Pechaluk's first-degree murder trial yesterday.

"He was bludgeoned to death as he lay naked and asleep in his girlfriend's bed," Lissaman said.

The plan was for
Puddicombe to phone police to say she had just come out of the shower
and was surprised by Hoy's bloodied body, the prosecutor said.

She was to say Hoy
was a Hells Angel, was being followed and that his tires had been
slashed. That is strikingly similar to what Puddicombe did tell police,
Lissaman said.

At 12:45 a.m. on Oct.
27, 2006, police responded to Puddicombe's 911 call and arrived at the
apartment she shared with Pechaluk and a male roommate on The Queensway
near Park Lawn Rd.

Hoy was face down in Puddicombe's bed. The axe was nearby.

Puddicombe, 36, soon faces her own first-degree murder trial.

Her motive "may have
been slightly different from Ashleigh's," Lissaman said, adding that she
stood to gain $250,000 from Hoy's life insurance and pension policies.

Pechaluk met
Puddicombe at the Loblaws grocery store at Victoria Park Ave. and
Gerrard St. E., where they were both worked. They soon were lovers.

Pechaluk's private journals show she was obsessed with Puddicombe, and frustrated by Hoy being around, Lissaman said.

Pechaluk confided to
fellow Loblaws part-timer Sarah Sousa that Hoy was interfering in their
relationship and forbidding them to see each other, the prosecutor
said.

Several months before
the murder, she told Sousa she and Puddicombe had plans to buy a house,
get married and have children, but they could never be together unless
Hoy was gone, Lissaman said. "Ashleigh started talking about ways of
killing Dennis."

A week before the
slaying, she told Sousa that she planned to enter Puddicombe's bedroom
when Hoy was asleep and hit him on the head with a baseball bat. She
said they would make it look as if someone came in through a window.

When police arrived,
the kitchen's sliding door was open. Hoy's blood was found near the
handle of the adjacent sliding door as if to suggest the killer escaped
that way.

"The evidence will show that this is not what occurred," Lissaman said.

Axe murderer convicted of killing long-time boyfriend to be with lesbian lover appeals life sentence

Natalie Alcoba | 13/01/30 | Last Updated: 13/01/31 10:26 AM ET

The appeal of a woman convicted in her boyfriend’s axe murder, a
crime allegedly driven by a complicated love triangle, hinges in part on
the instructions given to a Superior Court jury.

Nicola Puddicombe was found guilty in 2009 of first-degree murder in the slaying of her long-time partner, Dennis Hoy.

The sensational case — which took a dramatic twist when it emerged
that Puddicombe’s former lesbian lover actually confessed to the crime,
then retracted her story in court — moved to the Court of Appeal
Wednesday, where the accused’s lawyer argued Justice Mary Lou Benotto
should have been clearer in her instructions to the jury on when to
consider certain statements that implicated Puddicombe, and when to
disregard them.

Puddicombe, who is now around 40, was sentenced to life in prison
after the court heard she orchestrated a plan to kill her boyfriend of
11 years to collect a life insurance policy and be with her lover,
Ashleigh Pechaluk.

The Crown accused Ms. Pechaluk of wielding the axe that killed Mr.
Hoy as he slept in Puddicombe’s bed in October 2006, but in a separate
trial, she was acquitted. For legal reasons, Ms. Pechaluk’s tearful,
videotaped police confession — in which she told police Puddicombe
played no role in the slaying — was excluded from her own trial, but
played during Puddicombe’s. On the stand, however, Ms. Pechaluk denied
killing Mr. Hoy and said she had only been trying to protect her former
lover.

The appeal arguments centre around key witness Sarah Sousa, who
testified that Ms. Pechaluk told her of the plot she and Puddicombe had
hatched to kill Mr. Hoy.

“Ashleigh would be the one to physically hit him in the head and
Nikki would be the one to call the cops,” she told the court in 2009.

Puddicombe’s lawyer, David Harris, argued the trial judge did not
adequately warn the jury that while it could consider Ms. Sousa’s
testimony when considering whether a conspiracy had occurred, it could
not consider it when determining whether Puddicombe was a part of the
plan.

The case speaks to problems with the way juries are instructed to
deliberate on conspiracy cases involving two people, Mr. Harris argued,
urging the Court of Appeal to alter the approach.

Hearsay evidence presented only to determine whether or not a
conspiracy occurred between two people could later “tempt” the jury to
convict an individual of having participated in the crime, he said.

“This is just too much for a jury to handle. They cannot comprehend
what is virtually incomprehensible, lawyers and judges dancing madly on
the head of a pin,” Mr. Harris said. “They’re not morons… but they’re
not robots either.”

Ontario and federal Crown attorneys said the current method works well.

If Mr. Harris’s argument is true and the instructions are too
complicated, “then we have to rethink our [entire] system,” as juries
are expected to follow all sorts of instructions, argued federal Crown
attorney Iona Jaffe. “We have faith in juries.”

The appeal is being heard before Justices David Doherty, Marc Rosenberg, Janet Simmons, Robert Armstrong and Michael Tulloch.